Sound and Shadow
by Eternalis
Summary: Inspired by LadyElaine's story "The Promised Land I: Lost and Found." A human and an alien reflect on song, and flight, and darkness. Fixed.


I deleted the old version of this and reposted it because I couldn't get my corrections to go through.

Let me go where I will,  
I hear a skyborne music still.  
Its sound from all things old,  
Its sound from all things young.  
From all that's fair, from all that's dark,  
Peals out an everlasting song.  
Not only in the rose,  
It is not only in the bird.  
Not only rainbow glos,  
Nor in its music heard.  
For in the dark and cold of things,  
There always, always something sings.  
From all that's fair, from all that's dark,  
Peals out an everlasting song.  
Tis not in stars I look,  
Nor in the bloom of spring born flowers.  
Nor in the robin's song,  
Nor in the glint of showers.  
But in the dark and cold of things,  
there always, always something sings.  
But in the dark and cold of things,  
There always, always something sings.  
There always something sings.  
-Libera, Something Sings

This was inspired by LadyElaine's story, The Promised Land I: Lost and Found. The story itself was incredible, and a line from it grabbed my attention. I don't remember exactly how it goes, but a Pitch Black alien observes humans communicating and thinks how much better it is to communicate with motion and song and scent. It got me to thinking, because my experience with sound and especially music has impacted me more than any other force in my life. Song of any sort is better to me than words, and I can draw images and concepts from wordless sounds or from songs I don't understand. And when it comes to songs in other languages, I've had people tell me that a lot of the time, I'm right about those images. It got me to thinking, so I wrote something, a poem, of my own place in sound, and of my own journey through the sanctuary in that story, set as if I were there, inspired by the momentary reflection of a nameless alien in a lovely story. (And to see why said humans and said alien did not immediately murder each other thereafter, one would have to read said story. It is worth your while.)

This is not structured in verses, and despite the lack of quotes, it is structured as if two people, one human and one something other, are having a conversation in pure frequency. Obviously I don't know what that would look or sound like so I put it in poem form, imagine whichever melody you like. Birdsong, whalesong, classical, ethereal, or simply pure, mournful sound...

I will walk through the chaos in the discords,  
And trust a moment to an eternal darkness.

I will step in to empty space,  
And become the wind and sky.  
I will know the night and befriend it,  
I will greet the stars by name,

I will listen to music from a thousand voices,  
And hear the weaving of its image.  
I will sing my way through an alien soundscape,  
And paint my world with chords,  
I will call in to the heart of silence,  
Carry a flute and play a song,  
There where no song has been heard.

I will walk in to a maelstrom of shadows,  
And there cry out my desperate notes,  
I will greet the sky like an old friend,  
And trust myself to its grasp.  
I will wing my way through time and space,  
And know the faces of every music.

I will hear it in the depths of foreign ground,  
And out in the endless night sky,  
I will hear it on the red-streaked sands,  
And in among the black rock canyons.

I will greet the sunset with a rising scale,  
And wait out the day,  
Sleepwalking in to sounds that I can touch,  
Sounds that I can see and taste.

I will lose words and gain music,  
And shed an outer mantle, malleable to song,  
And drift through all worlds.  
Listening...  
And singing.  
I will walk a labyrinthine maze,  
And trust the shadows within it.  
I will speak to one who fell from grace and rose nonetheless,  
Sing with one who lost the light in their eyes, but found it again.

I will feel the call of blood, and join in the wild hunt,  
I will ride the night on a tide of darkness.  
I will end and silence, and become a breaker,  
Yet I will face what fears me the most,  
And speak to it in a song tongue lost to time.

I yearn for flight, feel it in every bone in my body,  
I mourn the sky, the friend I lost,  
I dream of winging my way through sound and shadow.  
I reply to the night, which greeted me with song,  
And ask what it is to fly ...  
Stand face to face with what sings...  
In the dark and cold of things.

I will sing to you of a lost world,  
Sing of a lost people.  
I will set aside the burden of hate,  
And continue on the way we go.  
I dream sometimes, through some thing I cannot explain,  
Of the horror and dissonance that lives in distant shadows.  
For I am the one that sings,  
In the dark and cold of things.

When will I fly? I ask,  
And in music the tone is colored blue with deep sadness.

Maybe here, or there, I reply,  
Some time, when you have gone on...  
In the dark and cold of things.  
Where we all will fly. 


End file.
